Sat 16-Mar-91: Having had the opportunity to use PCs extensively both at work and at home for several years I decided to take a very subjective look at what have been the most useful MsDos shareware and PD utilities for me. Here are my choices in an alphabetical order. Fri 11-Oct-1991: Updated the text and added some new items on my list. Sat 2-Nov-91: Added one further item (shrom) on the list, and rewrote some others a bit. For the record. I have registered all the shareware programs on this list. Fri 17-Apr-92: Updated the version numbers and added one new item. Tue 19-May-92: Updated the version numbers and added two new items. Sat 20-Feb-93: Updated the version numbers and added one new item. ask.exe The most important command missing from MsDos batch programming. Ask comes under many names and has been rewritten by countless programmers. Also I have written my own in garbo.uwasa.fi:/pc/ts/tsbat41.zip. The basic idea of asks is to prompt the user for a choice, and return an errorlevel (or sometimes put a value to an environment variable), which then can be used for a conditional jump in the batch in accordance with the user's choice. My ask uses the most common ask standard of returning as the error level the ascii number of the first letter of the user's response, but I also have written an errorlevel version. buffit30.zip A resident screen scrollback utility. This handy TSR utility allows one to see back what has been written on screen (through bios). Because the scroll back buffer reserves a lot of memory, buffit is best used with an upper memory manager like MsDos 5.0's unbuilt or lastbyte (see a later item). I have this tsr routinely loaded in my autoexec.bat. ced10da.zip Command line editor. This facility lets the user to recall earlier commands, edit the commands, make aliases (synonyms) for the commands, and optionally ignore commands. Ced is old, but still extremely useful as such even compared to MsDos 5.0 doskey. Don't go without it, or some other good, alternative command line editor. Despite being old, CED still often features on the best program lists of many computer magazines. The later versions of CED have gone commercial, as far as I know. dc106f.zip Directory control from the PC-Magazine by Michael Mefford. A simple, but a very useful point and shoot facility to copy, move, rename, or delete files. DC is an excellent example of the fact that a good program doesn't need to be over-packed with features nor need it be flashy. dcf40d.zip A fast 1-pass copying facility for floppies. One of the most irksome MsDos task is copying a floppy in a single drive. I have been looking for a suitable 1-pass program for quite awhile, and found quite a few, and this one is it for the timne being. It has a nice interface and is fast since it can skip the empty sections. Yet, I included this utility with considerable doubts, because there still is ample room for improvement starting from the missing possibility of storing the option settings, removing the nag screen, etc. dirmat20.zip Dirmatch for comparing & manipulating two dirs side by side. Another really great utility from Michael Mefford. Originally appeared in the PC-Magazine. dirw.exe From my own garbo.uwasa.fi:/pc/ts/tsutil37.zip utility collection. It is like MsDos dir /w, but it also shows the file attributes, and it can be made to recurse all the directories. I use it on a daily basis to have a backup list of what my hard disks contain. It is vindicative to note that in DOS 5.0 the new dir command was endowed among other things with abilities what my dirw already had. drx108.zip A shell for listing and handling lzexe and pklite etc. compressed executables. A very useful companion to lzexe and pklite. Nothing is perfect, though. I am not happy with the fact that dirx forcibly leaves one to the target directory on exit. Also the documentation leaves exceptionally much to be desired in a top utility. But the basic idea is very sound, and to my knowledge there are no alternatives (which is rather strange) so dirx is left to hold the field at the moment despite its faults and non-support. There is a later version than 1.08 but it has configuration file problems. dosclip.com "A TSR utility that provides Windows-like cut-and-paste facilities to applications running under DOS". A PC-Magazine utility by Douglas Boling in vol11n07.zip. I use it for example for cutting and pasting commands and data when being connected, using MsKemit or Telnet, to your Unix hosts garbo and chyde. The only problem is that the hot keys are too common and may thus interfere with other applications. For a patch see garbo.uwasa.fi:/pc/pd2 /post09.txt. fed153.zip FileEDit binary editor for MsDos by Phillip Nickel. Binary (or rather hexadecimal) editors are specialized utilities needed only occasionally for advanced usage. As with ascii editors the choice of one's binary editor is a matter of taste and there are other goods ones like beav. gsz1106.zip Full-screen version of Zmodem file transfer protocol. Chuck Forsberg's Zmodem has become the veritable standard of file transfers from BBSes and between PCs and hosts. GSZ brings the visual interface to DSZ that has been formerly lacking while it has been offered by some telecommunication programs such as Telix. Forsberg's programs must be the most frequently updated programs on the scene, which is not an unqualified boon. keyrate.exe From my own garbo.uwasa.fi:/pc/ts/tsutld20.zip utility collection. What it effectively does is that it speeds up the cursor movement. An absolute necessity because the slow default keyrepeat rate makes moving the cursor a real pain in the neck. Mostly found only in commercial packages. Haven't seen many shareware or PD "competitors", but I may be too "optimistic". MsDos 5.0 introduced this feature into the mode command, which goes to show that the idea was a good one. list77a.zip Vernon Buerg's list program, a definite must for file browsing. It is so good that many other programs rely on list instead of having browsing routines of their own. Currently contains three versions of list of varying program sizes. Very handy also as a "grep" finder using the /F option. pcopy787.zip Patriquin's really fabulous copy program with a huge selection of useful optional switches. The current version is pcopy92c.zip, but the program and its installation have become so bloated that I have personally preferred to stay with an older version. In fact I still use version 5.0 on my old Zenith portable. pklte115.exe PKWare's compress and uncompress executables. One of the great ideas of 1990 came from France from Fabrice Bellard. He wrote lzexe91.zip (currently) to decompress executable at call time by putting the decompression code into the executable. PKWare took the idea (an echo of the .arc debacle?), and developed with their background a more professional product. I must say, however, that I don't like pklite's (commercial version's) ability to make irreversible compressed executables, because this increases the danger of virii going undetected. pkz204g.exe The most useful all-round archiver. From PKWare. (Surrounded by some totally stone-age hassle around the encryption issue when exported outside North America). Pkzip was born out of the controversy and litigation on .arc archiving. There is also a Unix (actually multi-platform) version of zip by Mark Adler, Rich Wales, Jean-loup Gailly, and others of the InfoZIP programming group. Zip is my preferred choice in garbo.uwasa.fi archive maintenance with zoo coming second with zoo's date stamp problems. Despite its dominance, pkzip is not without its downsides. Beside the encryption issue, the 2.0 release was announced almost a year prematurely. It became known as a classic case of vaporware, and at first release pkz204c.zip was outrageously buggy and sloppily documented. qedit215.zip QEdit, SemWare's text editor. More than perhaps any other category of programs, the choice of a text editor is a matter of taste. I have opted for QEdit because it has the same basic WordStar-like commands than Borland's Turbo Pascal interface, is nicely configurable, and has a fair macro language for advanced users. The only major thing I personally miss very much is a right-side justification. scanv100.zip VIRUSCAN scans for a great number of major virus strains. McAfee's virus scanner has drawn true world-wide acclaim. I've needed it just once in earnest, but that's enough to get it on this list. One of the utilities that has been very frequently updated to keep up with the developments. By the time you read this, it is likely that the version number has grown again. I have been personally very pleased with the exemplary support from McAfee. shez86.zip A shell ("Compress Companion") to drive the many archivers for MsDos (that is for the programs un/compressing and clustering files). By Jim Derr, who has constantly been keeping Shez up to date with archiver developments. Makes life easy with so many alternative archiver methods in use. The number of the menu driven / hotkey options in this program is something to behold. Like most of the other programs on this list, I need it every day. Among its many advanced usages is the possibility of using it to convert archives from one format to another. shroom2d.zip ShellRoom. Swap to disk when shelling from an application. One of the big problems with many programs that allow the user to shell to Dos, is that the user is left with little memory. This very useful utility remedies that by swapping the application to dos when the application shells. Turbo Pascal is the only important application I have found so far that is not amenable to SHell ROOM. snippr26.zip Snip the screen into a file originally by Tom Kihlken in the PC-Magazine. The later versions are tweaks, that is the original source has been developed by several different savants. This TSR utility can capture text from the screen, and send it to the printer, a file, or the keyboard buffer as if typed. See garbo.uwasa.fi:/pc/pd2/post09.txt for a patch to customize the Snipper hotkey. sst_53b.zip Seek and thou shalt find Supersonic Search Tool formerly called Whereis. An excellent filename finder by Keith Ledbetter. Fast, with many useful options including browsing inside archives and executing commands on found files. (Echoes of Unix find). Can also find and list the duplicate files on a hard disk even if there are better, specialized programs in that respect. As far as the rumor has it, it is again in for a change in name. tlb-v220.zip The Last Byte MsDos Upper Memory Manager. It enables loading device drivers and TSRs to high memory. Such a utility becomes a practical necessity when the number of memory-hungry TSRs grows as happens on my MsDos 3.30 office 386 where I have, for example, a network driver to connect to our department's laser printer. None of the upper memory managers are simple to use, but Dan's is not prohibitively difficult as some others. At the time of first writing this Dan was upgrading to 2.00 with a new user interface. (I was of the beta testers, and I don't accept such a task easily because of my own time limitations). tlx320-?.zip Telix 3.20 telecommunications package. There are many excellent telecommunication packages on the scene, and the choice is somewhat arbitrary between them. Telix was one of the first with inbuilt Zmodem, and its user interface is the most convenient I know. But none of the telecom progs is completely without problems, and this goes for Telix, too. Telix has a new owner deltaComm Development. tsrcom34.zip TSR utilities from TurboPower Software, also a must. Most importantly includes mark, release, and mapmem for unloading terminate and stay resident programs. The veritable standard of TSR maintenance. I have often advised the users of TSRs to apply mark / release from tsrcom rather than using the TSRs' own methods for removing them from the memory because of the danger of leaving holes and finally crashing the machine. .................................................................. Prof. Timo Salmi Co-moderator of comp.archives.msdos.announce Moderating at garbo.uwasa.fi anonymous FTP archives 128.214.87.1 Faculty of Accounting & Industrial Management; University of Vaasa Internet: ts@uwasa.fi Bitnet: salmi@finfun ; SF-65101, Finland